'Frivolous Carla Bruni is a modern-day Marie Antoinette' claims new book

Carla Bruni has been branded a modern-day Marie Antoinette and a 'frivolous fashion victim who is isolated from reality' in a scathing new book about her life as France's First Lady.

The former supermodel's marriage to President Nicolas Sarkozy is a relationship between two people who are 'consumed by ambition', according to respected historian Patrick Weber.

The Belgian-born academic describes in his new book, Queen Carla, how Bruni's love of high fashion and obsession with psychotherapy have left her cut off from the French people.

The 18th century French aristocrat Marie Antoinette and French First Lady Carla Bruni. The Belgian academic's book draws comparisons between them

He writes: 'She behaves like the former queens of France, who is consorting with her king after an arranged marriage.

'She is rich and Italian like Catherine de Medici, a follower of the arts like Anne of Brittany and a frivolous fashion victim like Marie-Antoinette.

'A survey in 2009 found 51 per cent of French people thought she was remote and isolated from their daily lives.

Carla Bruni with her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy

'Her status as a foreigner makes the problem worse. She is being ever more unpopular with the Italians yet has now been accepted by the French.

'It seems she can't behave like a First Lady because she doesn't want to give up her lifestyle.'

It is the second time in six months that Bruni has been likened to doomed French queen Marie-Antoinette.

French First Lady Carla Bruni rides in a carriage with Prince Philip during a visit to Britain

Last year, France's leading high society magazine Point de Vue described the 41-year-old former model as a multi-millionaire socialite who does very little real work, and who is completely out of touch with ordinary people.

The magazine showed photos of the President's third wife juxtaposed with paintings of Marie-Antoinette, the wife of Louis XIV whose lavish lifestyle and laziness led to her being guillotined in 1793 at the height of the French Revolution.

The magazine wrote: 'She has the same posture, same look and same smile. And both women were well known for their obsession with designer clothers and their own physical image.'

Model Carla Bruni on the catwalk in Paris during her supermodel days. Her interest in fashion attracts suspicion among many French

In his new book Mr Weber writes: 'She may be prepared to be challenged in her role as an artist, but much less so in her status as the wife of the head of state.

'This is perhaps because the PR operation behind their romance - this fiction that began in Disneyland - was a failure. No one believed it.'

He said mass media coverage of Bruni and Sarkozy walking hand-in-hand around Disneyland Paris was simply a crass way of distracting the public from their 'bling' lifestyle of posh restaurants and yachts.

He added: 'This so-called love at first sight was actually just the meeting of two people both consumed by ambition.'

Mr Weber criticised Bruni's claim that she had no interest in her husband's work or wish to effect his political decisions.

He said her 'fingerprints' were all over the way he dealt with culture minister Frederic Mitterand's confession he had been a sex tourist, and of the arrest of film director Roman Polanski.

'When she says she has no influence on the president, I don't believe her,' Weber said.

'In the corridors of power, people say the president has changed - and the one who has caused this change is her, this rebel of the champagne socialists.

'Carla Bruni now has a problem of where to place herself. Her left-wing family cannot forgive her marriage to the right wing of politics, while she will also never be truly accepted by Sarkozy's political allies.'

Bruni - who has had previous relaionships with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton - has an eight-year-old son Aurelian with philosophy professor Raphael Enthoven.

She and Sarkozy began whirlwind romance after meeting at a dinner party in Paris in November 2007.

They wed just three months later at a private ceremony in the Elysee Palace on February 2, 2008.

Since they married, Bruni has regularly been attacked in the media by members of Sarkozy's own UMP political party.